John Stott was born in London in 1921 and attended Cambridge University. He came to Christ through the evangelism of a lecturer in his public school. After his ordination in the Church of England he served as a curate and later rector of All Souls Church, Langham, in London’s West End.. He says "God gave me a hunger for himself." He made three difficult decisions in his life he has never regretted: not to become an academic, not to marry, and not to become a bishop. "I want to bear witness that I have found in the ministry to which God has called me enormous joy and satisfaction."

Brother Andrew was born in 1928 in Holland. Indonesia was still a Dutch Colony in 1945, and it was there, having joined the army, that he was wounded. During his recovery he began reading the Bible in earnest. "A bullet made an end to my sports ambition, but put me on the track to Jesus." Conversion "did not come suddenly," it grew from reading the Bible, and seeking God. He went to Glasgow in 1953 to study at the WEC mission college, but it was while attending a communist youth festival in Warsaw Poland, that he felt a decisive call to the field. He adopted the name Brother Andrew in 1960.

In two of his last public addresses before his death in 1998, delivered at Samford University, Bishop Newbigin articulated his compelling vision for the Church and the Christian Gospel in the modern world. It was a vision that had distinguished Newbigin as one of the most incisive and insightful religious leaders of the 20th century.

Loren Cunningham was born in California in 1935. His missionary parents worked among the poor in the Southwest, preached in the streets and lived in a tent with boxes for furniture. At age 13, he had his first conviction of a call to world mission. Later he had a vision of the world covered with waves of young people taking the Gospel to all the nations of the earth.